Who is the corrupt party in the case of the Enron, Merck, Xerox and Andersen scandals. The question mark in the sub-title indicates our skepticism about the usefulness of the term 'transitional'.
2 THE SACK OF TWO CITIES
ORGANIZED CRIME AND POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN YOUNGSTOWN
Youngstown, the heart of the American steel industry, exemplifies this extremely well (Linkon and Russo 2002: 26). Their role and the role of politicians in crippling Palermo in its post-war development cannot be overstated.
3 BRIBES, GIFTS AND UNOFFICIAL PAYMENTS: RETHINKING
CORRUPTION IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIAN HEALTH CARE
Meeting in the outpatient section of the maternity hospital, Natalia Borisovna greeted Sonia with a comfortable smile, almost as if meeting an old friend. Women who want to pay should have the opportunity to do so," Natalia Borisovna told me.
4 CORRUPTION AS A TRANSITIONAL PHENOMENON: UNDERSTANDING
POSTCOMMUNIST STATES
Some see corruption in the public sector as a consequence of the rise of the career politician who joins politics for personal gain. The notion of endemic corruption in post-communist 69 states in power (a factor in non-democracies but also in democracies where governments win many consecutive elections) may also contribute to corruption, with its disdain for accountability for the actions of public officials. Such considerations led Heywood to argue that "the meaning of political corruption may vary with the nature of the political system in question" (1997: 6).
Most discussions of political corruption seem to be based on the assumption that corruption is a deviation from the norm of the juridical-rational form of authority, in the sense that it was established by Max Weber. The presence and discussion of corruption is symptomatic of a larger change in the character and subsequent organization of the post-communist administrative system. Although impossible to quantify with precision, corruption appears endemic in many post-communist states, and especially in the states of the former Soviet Union.
Another major reason why post-communism has seen an increase in corruption is that in the era of privatization there were great opportunities to profit from the sale of public property (Mauro 1998). 1998) Corruption, clientelism and the future of the constitutional state in Eastern Europe, Eastern European Constitutional Review, Vol.
5 CORRUPTION, PROPERTY
RESTITUTION AND ROMANIANNESS
The aim is to arrive at a useful understanding of corruption, both as a symbolic and social practice by studying how and why it works in specific social contexts by sharing 'the immediate, direct, living impression of Peter, Paul' and the life of life . John, of single, real individuals', as Antonio Gramsci once said in one of his letters from prison (in Crehan. Studying corruption ethnographically should also provide insight into how 'the state' is experienced and conceptualized by 'real people' in their everyday lives , discourses and practices and how this ultimately produces and transforms their personal and social identities. From this point of view, bribers and bribe-takers involved in 'petty corruption' can join together and blame the 'state' as the primary and genuine source of corruption .
According to Popescu, receiving compensation from the 'state' would be immoral, implying that Romanian society itself would be unjustly punished. Miorita', Mihail presented the 'Romanians' not as fatalists passively awaiting their fate, but rather as active veneological subjects consumed by envy and ready to act illegally to secure their neighbor's possessions.7. A first intriguing hint comes from documentary sources, a short sardonic article that appeared in a recent issue of the cultural magazine Dilemma, the feature section of which was (again) ironically titled "The Virtues and Demerits of Corruption."
In Romania, the perceived ubiquity of corruption in key social areas (such as work, education and healthcare) means that people often use irony to communicate (outside and within 'the community') and play with the asymmetrical structure. of power relations underlying corrupt practices at different levels. Political scientists and transnational institutions involved in anti-corruption policy, such as the World Bank and NGO Transparency International, conventionally define corruption as “the abuse of public office for private gain.”
6 INTEGRITY WARRIORS
GLOBAL MORALITY AND THE ANTI- CORRUPTION MOVEMENT IN THE
Global Morality and the Movement Against Corruption in the Balkans 105 In this last group of negative phenomena lies the 'growth' of global corruption. In the remainder of this chapter, I describe three places where the anti-corruption world unfolds. As in Prague, the core of anti-corruption activists are British, American, Canadian and European.
Global Morality and the Movement Against Corruption in the Balkans 119 ministries or government bodies to act honestly. Global Morality and the Anti-Corruption Movement in the Balkans 123 concepts, including concepts such as 'governance', 'transparency' and. It is these frustrations that are mobilized by various actors in the anti-corruption landscape that is Romania.
Global morality and the anti-corruption movement in the Balkans 129 interests of even the most ruthless actors. Carothers (2000) Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace). 1999) Elements of a successful anti-corruption strategy, in R.
7 CULTURE AND CORRUPTION IN THE EU: REFLECTIONS ON FRAUD,
The official view – the image the Commission likes to give of itself – is that the EU institutions are the living embodiment of EU (and Enlightenment) ideals of reason, progress, modernity and universalism against the particularism and integralism of the nation-state (Delanty 2002; Holmes 2000). That is, individuals were clearly influenced by the Commission's definition of itself as. Community conscience', 'defender of the European interest' and 'dynamo of the integration process'. The commission's origins may also explain its ethos, particularly the fact that in the early days Walter Hallstein had consciously sought
The following stories from my field notes are an indication of how the Commission's organizational culture appears to seasoned insiders. The 10% of the EU budget that the European Court of Auditors accepts is misspent amounts to around £5 billion each year. In order to regain public confidence in the EU project, the Commission immediately started to implement all the CIE recommendations.
Therefore, how should we interpret corruption in the EU and the Commission's data on institutional reform. LESC (Labour European Safeguards Committee) (1999) Bulletin May: 1. 1998) Anthropological Study of the European Commission (Unpublished report commissioned for the Cellule de Prospective, Brussels).
8 CORRUPTION IN CORPORATE AMERICA: ENRON – BEFORE AND
And Depression-era new settlement laws brought protections against corrupt behavior on Wall Street and offshore. Mills argued that Americans were clinging to an outdated understanding of the distribution of power in the U.S., and Mills. How members of the ruling class - or its various factions - understood their place in the economy and social hierarchy.
Making a clearer distinction between corruption and crime is essential if we want to make sense of corporate corruption in the US. The indiscriminate mixing of terms (such as 'scandal', 'crime', . 'unethical' and 'corruption') obscures the meaning of the difference between crime and corruption in the US. To what extent are corporate values reflective images of the market values that permeate social institutions in the wider society.
1984) Impartial Capitalists: The Objective of the Securities and Exchange Commission (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Goff (1985, reprint) White Collar Crime: The Uncut Version (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). 1904) History of the Standard Oil Company (New York: McClure, Philips).
9 NARRATING THE STATE OF CORRUPTION 1
My ambition is to rethink and evaluate theories about the state from an anthropological perspective. I am mainly concerned here with the ideas about the state created by the state officials themselves. But he told us that the village has a population of only 400 and that in the first installment of Jawahar's employment scheme it was allotted Rs.7000.
The secretary did not seem to know any of the village council members personally. Vaidyaji is the manager of the village cooperative union, which is the site of an embezzlement. Rural people belonging to the upper castes often interpreted the rise in corruption as the 'natural outcome' of the rise of Dalits, especially in the bureaucracy.
The interweaving of linguistic and social repeatability is central to their understanding of the (always contingent) reproduction of relations of inequality (see in particular Butler 1997 and Bourdieu 1993). 2003) India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India (New York: Columbia University Press).
10 WHERE THE JEEPS COME FROM
NARRATIVES OF CORRUPTION IN THE ALENTEJO (SOUTHERN
Tales of corruption in Alentejo (southern Portugal) 195 experts from the capital writing opinions on an EU project;. These are stories about shady real estate deals in Alentejo, in which Portugal's finance minister was involved, about the suicide of a young farmer from a neighboring town who could not repay the installments on his EU loans - allegedly he used the money to also buy many jeeps and other luxuries . In this chapter I will address the poetics and politics of corruption in Odemira district.
Thus arises a varied landscape of fragile relationships that transform themselves into larger units, the nation, the EU, into imagined communities that function according to abstract rules, rules that are incomprehensible to the inhabitants of the Alentejo and to the characters in Kafka's novels is. and yet almighty. His attitude about this varies considerably depending on his place in the system: it makes a big difference whether he is a member of the bureaucracy or whether he speaks about it from the outside. As in all studies of corruption, in mine it will be equally impossible to provide exact figures, for example of the degree of corruption.
It will also be impossible to document cases of corruption in such a way that they can withstand empirical scrutiny. After all, I wasn't on the scene in the Alentejo as an anthropological spy whose mission was to expose the people there and ultimately prove that all Portuguese are corrupt, or if not all of them, then still such and such a percentage in the Alentejo. compared to certain other countries – and ultimately in contrast to Germany.